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In our opinion: The cable company that cried wolf

Much like Aesop’s Boy Who Cried Wolf fable, CityWest has been airing alerts like a shepherd on hallucinogens

Emergency alert ... THERE MAY BE a little RAIN IN PRINCE RUPERT ... EMERGENCY ALERT ...

Much like Aesop’s Boy Who Cried Wolf fable, CityWest, the city-owned cable company, has been airing alerts like a shepherd on hallucinogens.

At first blush, an emergency alert system is a wonderful thing, but when alerts are hijacking television screens with inane announcements for areas so far away that many have to pull out a Rand McNally atlas to locate them or warnings about pedestrian weather issues, they become not beneficial but rather a dangerous annoyance.

To their credit, CityWest admitted there was a problem and have taken action. However, what was interesting was their seeming impotence to decide what was important to air and what was not.

To be fair, CityWest has been mandated to air these emergency alerts and as long as they want their licence, they must do so.

So far, however, whoever is making these alert decisions is seeing a lot of wolves that aren’t there.